Sarah vs The Night Before
by HayBales2011
Summary: Sarah can't sleep the night before her wedding, so she writes in a journal to get some things off her chest. Technically a sequel to 'The Three Christmas Lessons', but absolutely no previous knowledge needed. One-shot.


Sleep isn't easy for a spy. While you're sleeping, you're entirely vulnerable to any enemy that might want to do you in. However, as sleep is one of the necessities of life, spies have to learn to live with that. Most keep their guns next to the bed/cot/piece of ground that they happen to be sleeping on at that moment and train themselves to be light sleepers. Sleep is also not easy for a bride the day before her wedding. And right now, I'm both. My name is Sarah Walker, but by this time tomorrow, I'll be Sarah Bartowski.

My fiancé, Chuck, is a professional nerd. Wait, that kind of makes it sound bad…but believe me, it's exactly the opposite. Chuck is kind, sweet and funny. Not really the kind of guy you'd expect to get tangled up with a girl like me. But he did, and I'll spare you the long story. The first two and a half years after I met him were sheer agony. Not because of him, of course, but because of the fact that I had to lie to him. Soon after we met, he started letting me know he liked me, and I liked him too. The problem was, I had to hide it. Spies aren't allowed to fall in love. It's the cardinal rule of spying, as my friend Carina puts it. It can get you killed out there in the field. This meant that I had to look in his big brown puppy-dog eyes and tell him I didn't love him, even when everything else in me was screaming the opposite. I saw the pain in his eyes when I lied to him, and it absolutely broke me down. I finally had had enough. The government wasn't going to order me around anymore. We got together, and when he saved me from getting thrown into the Seine by my ex-boyfriend Shaw (again, long story), that's when I knew that I had made the right decision.

I fell in love with Chuck within the first five minutes of meeting him. I was standing with him in the Buy More at the Nerd Herd desk when a frantic father came in with his ballerina daughter, rambling about how he wasn't able to tape a recital because of a broken camcorder. Not only did Chuck fix the camcorder, but he taped the little girl dancing in front of the huge wall of TV's on the Buy More wall. I thought it was so sweet, and yes, I know, I'm being pretty sappy for a spy, but hey, for a person who's not used to things like that; it can be a real culture shock. I guess I fell in love with his innocence first. Here was a guy who knew nothing about the spy world, yet was thrust into it head-first. I had been dealing with the bad aspects of the world for so long, I almost forgot entirely about the good. Chuck and I bring out the best and worst in each other, I guess you could say.

For a normal girl, planning a wedding is stressful, but I've been in a lot of other stressful situations, including but not limited to: numerous knife fights with men twice my size, fighting my way through Thailand (where I happen to be known as 'the giant blonde she-male') to save Chuck from being lobotomized, and helping to save the world on a pretty much weekly basis. Those were stressful, but this wedding has been a different type of stress. You see, I'm used to life-or-death situations. It's part of my job. Life-or-death situations aren't really all that fun, but planning this wedding has been. It's been fun because I know what I'm going toward and I love it. Chuck and I spent a weekend in the suburbs together once, and that's what I envision my life being like after tomorrow, without the enemy agents trying to fry our brains, of course. I know that it most likely won't be like that (Chuck and I aren't really suburb people) but whatever it does turn out to be, I'll love it because Chuck will be with me, and that's all I need.

I don't know what tomorrow will really be like, but all I know is that I better get some sleep so that I can enjoy it, but I'm afraid that might be impossible. Like I said, sleep isn't easy for a bride the night before her wedding. When your body is trying to shut down, your brain is just racing with thoughts like, "I hope the icing on my wedding cake isn't too thick", because, as we all know, thick icing can ruin anything. Those are what I'm beginning to call 'Ellie thoughts'. You see, Chuck's sister and my maid-of-honor, Ellie, is a perfectionist. She even threw away a perfectly good turkey once on the day before Thanksgiving because it was 'a little dry'. So, as a spy, I'm usually a light sleeper, but add in the 'Ellie thoughts' and I am _not_ going to have a good night.

I suppose you might think I'm strange, spending my last night as a single woman writing randomly about my life, instead of tossing and turning like a normal girl would do. But I accepted the fact that I would never by normal long ago; but I guess your vision of normal is a little skewed when you were raised by a conman, and ended up a top agent at the CIA. I have never believed that God, or whoever runs things, meant for me to be normal.

I guess that's enough of the past. The thing that excites me most is the future. I mean, what woman wouldn't be excited about the future the night before her wedding? Spy world or no, all that matters to me right now is walking down the aisle tomorrow. I don't care if the Ring or even Volkoff himself decides to crash, or if the icing on the cake is too thick, or if my dress (which is beautiful by the way) is too tight. All that matters is that tomorrow, I'll be Mrs. Bartowski. I'll be able to look in Chuck's beautiful brown eyes and finally admit and promise that I love him, and I'll be able to see him look into my eyes in return and promise the same thing. I've been waiting for this ever since Christmas, when Chuck proposed, but in order to be awake to enjoy it, I need to get some beauty sleep. And maybe after getting these things off my chest I'll be able to. Good night.


End file.
